Overproduction of the english definitive article by portuguese learners: a cross-sectional study

The English article system is actually so complex that it presents many challenges for most non-native learners of English. The main difficulty of Portuguese learners, despite the numerous similarities between the two article systems, is noticeable in a marked tendency to produce the definite article where native speakers of English would not use it. This article reports the results of a cross-sectional study which examined the English definite article overproduction by a group of 12 Portuguese EFL learners with at least seven years of English instruction. The prediction is that these learners will exhibit evidence of transferring L1 features to their interlanguage when they overuse the definite article. The data were collected by means of a gap-filling task and a composition. The results found, as predicted, that these learners overused the in generic contexts. It is argued that this overuse is directly tied to and can be explained by transfer to somewhere and conceptual transfer principles.

Portuguese version of the Tilburg Frailty Indicator: Transcultural adaptation and psychometric validation

Artigo científico disponível actualmente em Early View (Online Version of Record published before inclusion in an issue)

Real-time Energy Resource Scheduling considering a Real Portuguese Scenario

The development in power systems and the introduction of decentralized generation and Electric Vehicles (EVs), both connected to distribution networks, represents a major challenge in the planning and operation issues. This new paradigm requires a new energy resources management approach which considers not only the generation, but also the management of loads through demand response programs, energy storage units, EVs and other players in a liberalized electricity markets environment. This paper proposes a methodology to be used by Virtual Power Players (VPPs), concerning the energy resource scheduling in smart grids, considering day-ahead, hour-ahead and real-time scheduling. The case study considers a 33-bus distribution network with high penetration of distributed energy resources. The wind generation profile is based on a real Portuguese wind farm. Four scenarios are presented taking into account 0, 1, 2 and 5 periods (hours or minutes) ahead of the scheduling period in the hour-ahead and realtime scheduling.

Determinant factors of turnover versus permanence of portuguese repatriates: an exploratory study

The study seeks to identify the determinant factors of the repatriate’s decision to remain or leave the company after repatriation, in a convenience sample of 40 Portuguese returnees working in companies based in Portugal. The main results were as follows: (1) there are seven factor categories: (a) salaries and benefits; (b) possibility of promotion, development, professional development; (c) organizational support (during and after the international mission) recognition of work; (d) economic and social atmosphere of the company, (e) good relationship with leadership; (f) convenience and/or personal / family well-being and; (g) external alternatives; (2) the main factors leading to permanence are (a) possibility of promotion, development and professional development and; (b) the existence of personal and family well-being / convenience; (3) the main factors leading to abandonment are (a) lack of organizational support and recognition of work performed; (b) lack of possibility of promotion, development and professional development and; (c) lack of personal / family well-being / convenience. Globally, the study suggests that the factors leading to permanence are very similar to those that lead to abandonment, although in reverse.

Cultural adaptation of websites: a comparative study of portuguese and dutch corporate websites

Master Thesis Presented at Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto for obtaining the Master’s degree in Digital Marketing under the supervision of Professor José de Freitas Santos

Significance of Biogenic Amines in Cold-Smoked Fish and Their Relation to Microbiological Characteristics of Products Available in Portuguese Retail Markets

Studies on microbial characterization of cold-smoked salmon and salmon trout during cold storage were performed on samples available in the Portuguese market. Samples were also classified microbiologically according to guidelines for ready-to-eat (RTE) products. Further investigations on sample variability and microbial abilities to produce tyramine and histamine were also performed. The coefficient of variation for viable counts of different groups of microorganisms of samples collected at retail market point was high in the first 2 wk of storage, mainly in the Enterobacteriaceae group and aerobic plate count (APC), suggesting that microbiological characteristics of samples were different in numbers, even within the same batch from the same producer. This variation seemed to be decreased when storage and temperature were controlled under lab conditions. The numbers of Enterobacteriaceae were influenced by storage temperature, as indicated by low microbial numbers in samples from controlled refrigeration. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and Enterobacteriaceae were predominant in commercial products, a significant percentage of which were tyramine and less histamine producers. These results might be influenced by (1) the technological processes in the early stages of production, (2) contamination during the smoking process, and (3) conditions and temperature fluctuations during cold storage at retail market point of sale.

HIV Voluntary Testing among Portuguese Women Attending Family Planning Clinics: Implications for HIV Prevention Education and Testing

Objectives: The aim of this article is to analyze the factors associated with HIV testing among 767 sexually active women. Methods: Participants were administered several self-report questionnaires that assessed behavioral and psychosocial measures. Results: Overall, 59.8% of the participants reported ever having tested for HIV. Results show that higher levels of education, being pregnant or having been pregnant, concern about AIDS, AIDS knowledge, self-efficacy in condom negotiation and perception of no risk in partner significantly predicted the likelihood of testing among women. Attending the mass was negatively associated with HIV testing. Conclusions: These findings provide information that can be used in the development of a focused gender sensitive HIV prevention program to increase HIV testing.

Predictors of consistent condom use among Portuguese women attending family planning clinics

Women account for 30% of all AIDS cases reported to the Health Ministry in Portugal and most infections are acquired through unprotected heterosexual sex with infected partners. This study analyzed socio-demographic and psychosocial predictors of consistent condom use and the role of education as a moderator variable among Portuguese women attending family planning clinics. A cross-sectional study using interviewer-administered fully structured questionnaires was conducted among 767 sexually active women (ages 18–65). Logistic regression analyses were used to explore the association between consistent condom use and the predictor variables. Overall, 78.7% of the women were inconsistent condom users. The results showed that consistent condom use was predicted by marital status (being not married), having greater perceptions of condom negotiation self-efficacy, having preparatory safer sexual behaviors, and not using condoms only when practicing abstinence. Living with a partner and having lack of risk perception significantly predicted inconsistent condom use. Less educated women were less likely to use condoms even when they perceive being at risk. The full model explained 53% of the variance in consistent condom use. This study emphasizes the need for implementing effective prevention interventions in this population showing the importance of taking education into consideration.

A rule-based grapheme-to-phone converter for TTS systems in european portuguese

In this paper, a linguistically rule-based grapheme-to-phone (G2P) transcription algorithm is described for European Portuguese. A complete set of phonological and phonetic transcription rules regarding the European Portuguese standard variety is presented. This algorithm was implemented and tested by using online newspaper articles. The obtained experimental results gave rise to 98.80% of accuracy rate. Future developments in order to increase this value are foreseen. Our purpose with this work is to develop a module/ tool that can improve synthetic speech naturalness in European Portuguese. Other applications of this system can be expected like language teaching/learning. These results, together with our perspectives of future improvements, have proved the dramatic importance of linguistic knowledge on the development of Text-to-Speech systems (TTS).

Kalman tracking linear predictor for vowel intelligibility enhancement on european portuguese HMM based speech synthesis

The recent developments on Hidden Markov Models (HMM) based speech synthesis showed that this is a promising technology fully capable of competing with other established techniques. However some issues still lack a solution. Several authors report an over-smoothing phenomenon on both time and frequencies which decreases naturalness and sometimes intelligibility. In this work we present a new vowel intelligibility enhancement algorithm that uses a discrete Kalman filter (DKF) for tracking frame based parameters. The inter-frame correlations are modelled by an autoregressive structure which provides an underlying time frame dependency and can improve time-frequency resolution. The system’s performance has been evaluated using objective and subjective tests and the proposed methodology has led to improved results.

Proposta de implementação da responsabilidade social numa empresa de engenharia e construção

Este estudo tem como finalidade analisar a possibilidade de implementação e integração do sistema de gestão da responsabilidade social numa empresa de engenharia e construção, de acordo com a norma NP 4469-1 (2008). Um dos objetivos deste trabalho é explorar uma das atividades fundamentais para o crescimento da economia: a construção. Esta funciona como barómetro da economia nacional, ou seja, movimenta vários setores importantes na sua cadeia de produção, contribuindo na criação de riqueza como também de emprego. Como consequência das mudanças na economia nos últimos anos, o comércio nacional transformou-se em comércio globalizado, tendo como mercado não só um país mas o mundo inteiro. As empresas veem isso como um desafio, independentemente da sua dimensão. A redução de custos e a diferenciação não podem ser a única fonte de competitividade. A recente situação de instabilidade económica mundial impulsiona as empresas a inovarem na sua imagem para com os stakeholders e, assim, garantir o seu desenvolvimento e sustentabilidade financeira. A temática da Responsabilidade Social Empresarial (RSE) surgiu da necessidade de existir um espírito empresarial responsável, ao encontro do conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável (Baylis e Smith, 2005). Apesar da ampla divulgação da noção de responsabilidade social das empresas, não se verifica, no entanto, uma definição exata da mesma, pois o tema tem sido abordado de diversas formas e tem dividido opiniões ao longo dos anos. A responsabilidade social é, assim, um fruto da gestão das organizações e das profundas críticas sociais, legais, éticas e económicas, inspiradas nos parâmetros da obtenção de valor social (Parra, 2003). A sustentabilidade revela uma mudança de paradigma do mundo empresarial, na medida em que as empresas devem adotar práticas socialmente responsáveis, que integrem de forma voluntária as preocupações ambientais, sociais e económicas no desenvolvimento das suas atividades operacionais e das suas interações com as partes interessadas.

O impacto da liderança na motivação dos profissionais de hotelaria do Grande Porto: o caso de um hotel 4****

A liderança e a motivação são aspetos essenciais no alcance do sucesso das organizações. Os líderes alcançaram um papel de destaque nas organizações, quer através da tomada de decisões estratégicas, quer na motivação dos colaboradores. Os conceitos e o entendimento da liderança têm vindo a mudar no decurso do tempo. E sugere que, provavelmente, a liderança adquirirá novos significados e será alvo de novas abordagens no futuro. Porque as sociedades, as organizações e as pessoas mudam, é presumível que novas janelas de compreensão venham a ser abertas. Atendendo a que vivemos numa era de globalização, em que a tecnologia, as estratégias e a estrutura das organizações são quase uniformes, a verdadeira vantagem competitiva só poderá surgir das competências dos recursos humanos. Os líderes também alcançaram um papel de destaque nas organizações, quer através da tomada de decisões estratégicas, quer na motivação dos colaboradores, motivação esta que é o motor que potencia capacidade para que os colaboradores sejam persistentes visando alcançar os seus objetivos. Na indústria hoteleira, objeto de estudo da presente investigação, um dos desafios permanentes é proporcionar níveis consistentes de qualidade de serviço. Esse segmento é profundamente afetado pelo comportamento dos seus líderes e das suas características pessoais e especialmente pela maneira como influenciam os seus colaboradores a alcançarem um resultado. Sendo assim, a presente dissertação tem como objetivo geral conhecer, identificar e analisar os estilos e comportamentos de liderança praticados pelos líderes dos vários departamentos de uma unidade hoteleira do Grande Porto. Para isso, recorremos ao estudo de caso, que inclui as metodologias quantitativa e qualitativa, por forma a identificar o(s) estilo(s) de liderança presente(s) no hotel. As conclusões que resultaram da aplicação das entrevistas e do inquérito por questionário mostram que o líder atual da unidade hoteleira em estudo é o líder democrático.

Reabilitação de um Edifício de Serviços no Porto para função de Hotel

Este relatório de estágio aborda o tema da reabilitação, referindo-se a uma intervenção da especialidade e também construção de raíz, de um Hotel situado na rua do Heroísmo no Porto. Portugal possui um edificado que tem vindo a degradar-se ao longo dos últimos anos, devido essencialmente à falta de operações periódicas de manutenção, conservação e reabilitação. Esta degradação resulta não só do mau estado de conservação generalizado dos edifícios, mas também da inexistência de infra-estruturas urbanísticas em devido funcionamento. Tal conjunto de situações, leva a um movimento migratório dos habitantes das cidades para as respetivas periferias. A cidade do Porto não é uma exceção, estando a necessitar de um forte esforço de reabilitação para inverter esta situação. Ao longo dos últimos anos têm vindo a ser criados diversos apoios financeiros, nacionais e europeus, com o objetivo de ajudar as operações de reabilitação. Mais recentemente foi possibilitada a criação de Sociedades de Reabilitação Urbana (SRU), cujo objetivo é o de promover e orientar todo o processo de reabilitação, de forma a regula-lo nos centros das cidades. No entanto a intervenção de reabilitação de um edifício é uma operação complexa, com diversas especificidades e com inúmeras condicionantes devido às pré-existências próprias de cada edifício.

Abertura de um hotel no Vale do Douro

Trabalho de natureza profissional para a atribuição do Título de Especialista do Instituto Politécnico do Porto, na área de Hotelaria e Restauração, defendido a 22-04-2016.